The 20th century saw striking advances in curing childhood cancer, primarily as a result of the discovery that broadly toxic chemotherapy agents could kill malignant cells. As a result, pediatric cancer, once a virtually incurable disease, now enjoys an overall long-term survival rate that tops 80 percent. In the 21st century, attention is turning to newer agents that promise to open additional, less toxic avenues to cure. As we mark Childhood …
Recent research shows improvement in long-term survival rates for childhood cancer patients, but also highlights the challenges that remain for many of the almost 400,000 survivors in the United States. Among these survivors are women facing gynecological health issues from the late effects of their treatment. What follows are several areas of concern that gynecologists and obstetricians should consider when treating women who had cancer as girls.
1. Treatment summary. …
Recent research finds that many internists do not feel comfortable or prepared to care for survivors of childhood cancer. Although the rarity of childhood cancer may explain this, the fact remains that as more and more pediatric cancer patients survive into adulthood busy internists often have some survivors in their practices. These patients would have been treated during the last decades of the 20th century or the beginning of …
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